Hyperdimensional Computing Empowered Federated Foundation Model over Wireless Networks for Metaverse

The Metaverse, a burgeoning collective virtual space merging augmented reality and persistent virtual worlds, necessitates advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and communication technologies to support immersive and interactive experiences. Federated learning (FL) has emerged as a promising technique for collaboratively training AI models while preserving data privacy. However, FL faces challenges such as high communication overhead and substantial computational demands, particularly for neural network (NN) models. To address these issues, we propose an integrated federated split learning and hyperdimensional computing (FSL-HDC) framework for emerging foundation models. This novel approach reduces communication costs, computation load, and privacy risks, making it particularly suitable for resource-constrained edge devices in the Metaverse, ensuring real-time responsive interactions. Additionally, we introduce an optimization algorithm that concurrently optimizes transmission power and bandwidth to minimize the maximum transmission time among all users to the server. The simulation results based on the MNIST dataset indicate that FSL-HDC achieves an accuracy rate of approximately 87.5%, which is slightly lower than that of FL-HDC. However, FSL-HDC exhibits a significantly faster convergence speed, approximately 3.733x that of FSL-NN, and demonstrates robustness to non-IID data distributions. Moreover, our proposed optimization algorithm can reduce the maximum transmission time by up to 64% compared with the baseline.

The Llama 3 Herd of Models

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) systems are powered by foundation models. This paper presents a new set of foundation models, called Llama 3. It is a herd of language models that natively support multilinguality, coding, reasoning, and tool usage. Our largest model is a dense Transformer with 405B parameters and a context window of up to 128K tokens. This paper presents an extensive empirical evaluation of Llama 3. We find that Llama 3 delivers comparable quality to leading language models such as GPT-4 on a plethora of tasks. We publicly release Llama 3, including pre-trained and post-trained versions of the 405B parameter language model and our Llama Guard 3 model for input and output safety. The paper also presents the results of experiments in which we integrate image, video, and speech capabilities into Llama 3 via a compositional approach. We observe this approach performs competitively with the state-of-the-art on image, video, and speech recognition tasks. The resulting models are not yet being broadly released as they are still under development.

Jointly Optimizing Terahertz based Sensing and Communications in Vehicular Networks: A Dynamic Graph Neural Network Approach

In this paper, the problem of vehicle service mode selection (sensing, communication, or both) and vehicle connections within terahertz (THz) enabled joint sensing and communications over vehicular networks is studied. The considered network consists of several service provider vehicles (SPVs) that can provide: 1) only sensing service, 2) only communication service, and 3) both services, sensing service request vehicles, and communication service request vehicles. Based on the vehicle network topology and their service accessibility, SPVs strategically select service request vehicles to provide sensing, communication, or both services. This problem is formulated as an optimization problem, aiming to maximize the number of successfully served vehicles by jointly determining the service mode of each SPV and its associated vehicles. To solve this problem, we propose a dynamic graph neural network (GNN) model that selects appropriate graph information aggregation functions according to the vehicle network topology, thus extracting more vehicle network information compared to traditional static GNNs that use fixed aggregation functions for different vehicle network topologies. Using the extracted vehicle network information, the service mode of each SPV and its served service request vehicles will be determined. Simulation results show that the proposed dynamic GNN based method can improve the number of successfully served vehicles by up to 17% and 28% compared to a GNN based algorithm with a fixed neural network model and a conventional optimization algorithm without using GNNs.

Probabilistic Semantic Communication over Wireless Networks with Rate Splitting

In this paper, the problem of joint transmission and computation resource allocation for probabilistic semantic communication (PSC) system with rate splitting multiple access (RSMA) is investigated. In the considered model, the base station (BS) needs to transmit a large amount of data to multiple users with RSMA. Due to limited communication resources, the BS is required to utilize semantic communication techniques to compress the large-sized data. The semantic communication is enabled by shared probability graphs between the BS and the users. The probability graph can be used to further compress the transmission data at the BS, while the received compressed semantic information can be recovered through using the same shared probability graph at each user side. The semantic information compression progress consumes additional computation power at the BS, which inevitably decreases the transmission power due to limited total power budget. Considering both the effect of semantic compression ratio and computation power, the semantic rate expression for RSMA is first obtained. Then, based on the obtained rate expression, an optimization problem is formulated with the aim of maximizing the sum of semantic rates of all users under total power, semantic compression ratio, and rate allocation constraints. To tackle this problem, an iterative algorithm is proposed, where the rate allocation and transmit beamforming design subproblem is solved using a successive convex approximation method, and the semantic compression ratio subproblem is addressed using a greedy algorithm. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Collaborative Reinforcement Learning Based Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Trajectory Design for 3D UAV Tracking

In this paper, the problem of using one active unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and four passive UAVs to localize a 3D target UAV in real time is investigated. In the considered model, each passive UAV receives reflection signals from the target UAV, which are initially transmitted by the active UAV. The received reflection signals allow each passive UAV to estimate the signal transmission distance which will be transmitted to a base station (BS) for the estimation of the position of the target UAV. Due to the movement of the target UAV, each active/passive UAV must optimize its trajectory to continuously localize the target UAV. Meanwhile, since the accuracy of the distance estimation depends on the signal-to-noise ratio of the transmission signals, the active UAV must optimize its transmit power. This problem is formulated as an optimization problem whose goal is to jointly optimize the transmit power of the active UAV and trajectories of both active and passive UAVs so as to maximize the target UAV positioning accuracy. To solve this problem, a Z function decomposition based reinforcement learning (ZD-RL) method is proposed. Compared to value function decomposition based RL (VD-RL), the proposed method can find the probability distribution of the sum of future rewards to accurately estimate the expected value of the sum of future rewards thus finding better transmit power of the active UAV and trajectories for both active and passive UAVs and improving target UAV positioning accuracy. Simulation results show that the proposed ZD-RL method can reduce the positioning errors by up to 39.4% and 64.6%, compared to VD-RL and independent deep RL methods, respectively.

Joint User Scheduling and Computing Resource Allocation Optimization in Asynchronous Mobile Edge Computing Networks

In this paper, the problem of joint user scheduling and computing resource allocation in asynchronous mobile edge computing (MEC) networks is studied. In such networks, edge devices will offload their computational tasks to an MEC server, using the energy they harvest from this server. To get their tasks processed on time using the harvested energy, edge devices will strategically schedule their task offloading, and compete for the computational resource at the MEC server. Then, the MEC server will execute these tasks asynchronously based on the arrival of the tasks. This joint user scheduling, time and computation resource allocation problem is posed as an optimization framework whose goal is to find the optimal scheduling and allocation strategy that minimizes the energy consumption of these mobile computing tasks. To solve this mixed-integer non-linear programming problem, the general benders decomposition method is adopted which decomposes the original problem into a primal problem and a master problem. Specifically, the primal problem is related to computation resource and time slot allocation, of which the optimal closed-form solution is obtained. The master problem regarding discrete user scheduling variables is constructed by adding optimality cuts or feasibility cuts according to whether the primal problem is feasible, which is a standard mixed-integer linear programming problem and can be efficiently solved. By iteratively solving the primal problem and master problem, the optimal scheduling and resource allocation scheme is obtained. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed asynchronous computing framework reduces 87.17% energy consumption compared with conventional synchronous computing counterpart.

Semantic Information Extraction for Text Data with Probability Graph

In this paper, the problem of semantic information extraction for resource constrained text data transmission is studied. In the considered model, a sequence of text data need to be transmitted within a communication resource-constrained network, which only allows limited data transmission. Thus, at the transmitter, the original text data is extracted with natural language processing techniques. Then, the extracted semantic information is captured in a knowledge graph. An additional probability dimension is introduced in this graph to capture the importance of each information. This semantic information extraction problem is posed as an optimization framework whose goal is to extract most important semantic information for transmission. To find an optimal solution for this problem, a Floyd's algorithm based solution coupled with an efficient sorting mechanism is proposed. Numerical results testify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with regards to two novel performance metrics including semantic uncertainty and semantic similarity.

A Lightweight NMS-free Framework for Real-time Visual Fault Detection System of Freight Trains

Real-time vision-based system of fault detection (RVBS-FD) for freight trains is an essential part of ensuring railway transportation safety. Most existing vision-based methods still have high computational costs based on convolutional neural networks. The computational cost is mainly reflected in the backbone, neck, and post-processing, i.e., non-maximum suppression (NMS). In this paper, we propose a lightweight NMS-free framework to achieve real-time detection and high accuracy simultaneously. First, we use a lightweight backbone for feature extraction and design a fault detection pyramid to process features. This fault detection pyramid includes three novel individual modules using attention mechanism, bottleneck, and dilated convolution for feature enhancement and computation reduction. Instead of using NMS, we calculate different loss functions, including classification and location costs in the detection head, to further reduce computation. Experimental results show that our framework achieves over 83 frames per second speed with a smaller model size and higher accuracy than the state-of-the-art detectors. Meanwhile, the hardware resource requirements of our method are low during the training and testing process.

Learning from Images: Proactive Caching with Parallel Convolutional Neural Networks

With the continuous trend of data explosion, delivering packets from data servers to end users causes increased stress on both the fronthaul and backhaul traffic of mobile networks. To mitigate this problem, caching popular content closer to the end-users has emerged as an effective method for reducing network congestion and improving user experience. To find the optimal locations for content caching, many conventional approaches construct various mixed integer linear programming (MILP) models. However, such methods may fail to support online decision making due to the inherent curse of dimensionality. In this paper, a novel framework for proactive caching is proposed. This framework merges model-based optimization with data-driven techniques by transforming an optimization problem into a grayscale image. For parallel training and simple design purposes, the proposed MILP model is first decomposed into a number of sub-problems and, then, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are trained to predict content caching locations of these sub-problems. Furthermore, since the MILP model decomposition neglects the internal effects among sub-problems, the CNNs' outputs have the risk to be infeasible solutions. Therefore, two algorithms are provided: the first uses predictions from CNNs as an extra constraint to reduce the number of decision variables; the second employs CNNs' outputs to accelerate local search. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme can reduce 71.6% computation time with only 0.8% additional performance cost compared to the MILP solution, which provides high quality decision making in real-time.

Distributed Multi-agent Meta Learning for Trajectory Design in Wireless Drone Networks

In this paper, the problem of the trajectory design for a group of energy-constrained drones operating in dynamic wireless network environments is studied. In the considered model, a team of drone base stations (DBSs) is dispatched to cooperatively serve clusters of ground users that have dynamic and unpredictable uplink access demands. In this scenario, the DBSs must cooperatively navigate in the considered area to maximize coverage of the dynamic requests of the ground users. This trajectory design problem is posed as an optimization framework whose goal is to find optimal trajectories that maximize the fraction of users served by all DBSs. To find an optimal solution for this non-convex optimization problem under unpredictable environments, a value decomposition based reinforcement learning (VDRL) solution coupled with a meta-training mechanism is proposed. This algorithm allows the DBSs to dynamically learn their trajectories while generalizing their learning to unseen environments. Analytical results show that, the proposed VD-RL algorithm is guaranteed to converge to a local optimal solution of the non-convex optimization problem. Simulation results show that, even without meta-training, the proposed VD-RL algorithm can achieve a 53.2% improvement of the service coverage and a 30.6% improvement in terms of the convergence speed, compared to baseline multi-agent algorithms. Meanwhile, the use of meta-learning improves the convergence speed of the VD-RL algorithm by up to 53.8% when the DBSs must deal with a previously unseen task.